wood splitter pictures and comments

Man, that's an able looking splitter. I would ballpark the pump in the 25+ GPM range, depending on how fast it's turning. If it's not geared right, I'd be willing to bet it would easily stall the old tractor at low speeds.... It's hard to say if it's off a truck or not. If it was, it was remote mounted, which is not unusual. It certainly has the capacity.
Do get a releif valve and plumb that into the line between the pump an control valve. Princess Auto may score that for you... but make sure you can get one with enough flow capacity for that pump. You may need to go to an industrial hydraulics supplier to get that as most of the Princess stuff tops out around 25 gpm. So be careful with that. The only other suggestion I would have is that you make a 4 or 6 way wedge for the splitter. You should have plenty of power for it... and that will save you time and effort if that matters. Good luck. It looks like an able one.

Rod

You can make a differnt spliter..... therefore,a shorter stroke.....no binding.....

strong sharp edge,1/16" then 1/4" plate stock out each side, till about 12" wide ....you plow the wood apart just after the split.....youl only need about 15' stroke.....mine worked fine..... .Don

Another fix would be to add to the hoses and connect it to the tractor hydraulics.

Maybe slower yet as I don't know the output of the ford pump.

This would elimanate the pto pump.

I run our spilter with a 1900 ford and it is fast enough but I only have a 4" cylinder which would take less volume.

Gary

Correct me if I"m wrong but that figure should be closer to 30 tons, unless you are working with short tons and have an over-size ram! So steelwork ratings may not be appropriate.
Of course that also reduces the force from a 4 inch cylinder, at that pressure, to a bit under 15 tons

(Pi*diameter*diameter)/4 = cross sectional area

At 2500 psi, force is 2500/2240 tons per square inch that only works out to 31 1/2 tons force.

I only point this out "cos someone designing a unit, without checking their own sums, may be misled. I always do it "belt and braces" fashion, working on the assumption that if it can be overloaded, it will.
I do note that your over-estimation will lead to 33% over-design in the steelwork, so perhaps that is not a bad thing.
Regards, RAB

When you reach the end of the stroke in either direction and continue to send fluid to the cylinder, you are "dead-heading". That is a no-no. Something will break. Most likely an old hose. In your case, it was the keyway.

Throw that valve in your junk pile and get one with a relief valve. They cost around $70. Make sure the setting is around 2500 psi or lower.

If your pump is in good shape, a six inch ram will produce about 40 tons. That is about double what most people run with a four inch ram. Four inch is marginal on some wood like elm. Your six inch ram should barely notice the oak you are spliting.

You have a decent sized pump if your cycle is ten seconds with a six inch cylinder.

If your transmission is running one-to-one, throw that in the junk pile too. I suspect you are stepping up the output RPMs. That's OK because the pump can run faster than 540.

It looks like you have a ten inch I-beam. That is marginal. A ten inch wide-flange beam would be more than adequate. You need to watch for flexing as it is warning you of the possibility of taking a permanent bend. A good log splitter beam will not flex. I have seen heavy six inch wide-flange beams handle a five in ram with no deflection with a log placed in a cross-cut position.

Please reduce the size of your pictures to 640 pixels. Thanks.

Looks like a vane pump. That would explain some of the noise. However that gear box in front of the pump looks like a speed reducer, or increaser. It should be an increaser. Those vane pumps can spin quite fast. That is why the automotive industry uses them for power steering pumps. In fact they need to spin fairly fast, as it takes some speed to get the vanes to seal against the bore.

I would not operate that thing at all untill you have a relief valve somewhere. If the spool valve thats on there is working good and dont leak too much, it'd be cheaper to put a remote relief on it somewhere.

Are you sure it takes 10 to 15 seconds to stroke that cylinder? Can you time it and get an exact time? That pump looks big enough to push that cylinder a lot faster than that. That is if it is spun fast enough.

I think even a napa store should have a generic relief valve in stock.

Looks like a heckuva splitter. Sure would be nice to get the cylinder to stroke a bit faster though.

The second thing is to take a stop watch and get some accurate extend time readings on the stroke time.

A 6 in bore cylinder with a 30 “ stroke would take 3.67 gallon of oil to fully extend it. If you are extending in 10 seconds then the pump would be delivering 36.7 GPM. If you are extending in 15 seconds then the pump delivery is 14.68 GPM That is a very big difference so you need to narrow down the actual time.

The HP you are going to need is roughly .0007 x PSIG x GPM

With 1500 PSI system pressure and 36.7 GPM you are going to need 38.535 HP
With 1500 PSI system pressure and 14.68 GPM you are going to need 15.4 HP,

How many gallon did you say your tank holds?

With no relief valve I can sure believe you are stalling out you tractor, and a bigger HP unit will build pressure until something breaks.

Sorry for the error and I hope there is not more math errors that I didn't catch.

I was typing the correction at the same time you posting I guess.

Would you allow me to use the "I old excuse" ?